Summer Songs - Ram
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The break up of the Beatles was difficult for fans of the Fab Four, but the individual Beatles also suffered. Because of legal action that had to be brought forth to dissolve the complex Beatles partnership, all assets in Apple Corps (the Beatles owned company) were frozen and that meant all royalty payments were stopped until the courts could sort things out. Even for solo albums and singles, you ask? Yes. In a strange twist of fate, the contracts the Beatles signed in 1968 when setting up Apple Corps stipulated that any revenue generated by solo projects went into the Beatles account. This was fine when George or John and Yoko issued low selling experimental records ("Electronic Sound," "Two Virgins," "The Wedding Album"), but it seemed unfair that the money had to be split four ways when George had a number one hit with "My Sweet Lord" or John Lennon's "Imagine" topped the charts. Apparently, the contract never anticipated a break-up of the band. Now, all money was frozen.
Desperate to get some cash flowing Paul assumed that while he was prohibited from receiving songwriting and performance payments, nothing prohibited Linda from "co-writing" songs for the new album and getting paid. McCartney tested the water by not only giving his wife co-writing credit on six songs on "Ram," but by listed her as a co-producer and giving her equal artist billing with him on the album. It is the only album credited to "Paul and Linda McCartney". Paul also made sure that Linda's co-creations were on singles from the album, thus giving her even more money. His first number one hit following the Beatles break up ("Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey") was written by "Paul and Linda McCartney." This meant half the songwriting royalties were paid to her.
The publishing company protested and questioned Linda's actual songwriting ability, but in the end paid her her share of the millions of dollars being generated by the album and singles with her name on them. John Lennon followed McCartney's lead and brought Yoko Ono into the mix giving her co-writing credit for their 1971 holiday single, "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)," but by then the music publisher had had enough of the Beatles trying to find loopholes to get paid and pointed to the tiniest of small print in one of their many contracts that stipulated that Lennon and McCartney could have no other credited songwriting partners than each other. They stopped the Lennon's Christmas single from being issued in the UK. Lennon settled with the publishers by agreeing to record a song at a later date from their catalog. McCartney's "punishment" for co-writing with his wife was to star in the "James Paul McCartney" TV special for ITV. Eventually some money started flowing to the former Beatles and the songwriting restriction was relaxed enough for Lennon to work with David Bowie ("Fame") and McCartney to collaborate with Elvis Costello, among others.
Now, onto "Ram." Unlike his stark solo debut where the former Beatle played all of the instruments, for his second album McCartney sought out the best musicians record company money could buy. He even brought in an orchestra on several tracks.
This is the magnificent DCC Gold CD mastered by Steve Hoffman. The sound is astonishing. This remaster is the original album without the two bonus tracks added on the 1993 remaster ("Another Day" and "Oh Woman, Oh Why").
Comments (13)
Beautiful- to my mind the real talent behind the beatles.Enough of the summer jibes- it's freezing here
just wishing the dcc gold sound would come across my speakers :)
@Mitchy - just tryin to warm you up!
@Cinful - where you at? I'll hop on over
i'm sure Boise is just a hop away ... NOT!! but thanks :)
Hey, to get away from the depressing breakup, let's party! Allan Klein just died! Of Alzheimers! So long, not-so-funny-man. Say hello to Dr. Seuss in hell.
# mitchy Trusted Mogger (Remove) mitchy says Beautiful- to my mind the real talent behind the
Are you tryin to get me angry, Mitchy?
all you need is love :-)
Love the "Uncle Albert" part, and detest the "Admiral Halsey" part. (Too silly and "Yellow Submarine"-y for me. And yes, I've had enough of silly love songs.) Generally, though, I preferred the first solo Macca album and a few of the Wings things to Ram. But the talent is undeniable, isn't it?
Definitely shows potential...
I heart Ram.
I like it when Paul makes the phone noise.
"“Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” stems from the British musical theater and has the feel of an overture, with multiple sections that are independent of one another. “That's right,” agrees Van Winkle, “and there were some issues we had to deal with as a result. For example, if you listen carefully, you'll hear Paul gurgling right before the telephone voice comes in. That sound was his imitation of a British telephone ring. He was supposed to give the engineer a cue when he wanted the lowpass filter dropped in for the Admiral Halsey character. The engineer made the switch too early and the filter came in on one of the gurgles! Paul didn't care, though. To him, it was all about the feel of the music.”"
Have you heard the Alternate Mono version, of Ram.
http://octaner.blogspot.com/2008/03/alternate-ram.html
So good.
The Beatles were masters at incredible stereo seperation. I can't listen to mono Beatles, if there is an alternative. It loses all the magic of the listening experience IMHO.
These sound great! I wasn't aware of the reasons behind putting the wifies on as co-writers. Now it makes more sense.